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Last week, Emma Watson appealed to guys to stand up for equal rights. It was a great and empathic speech in which she did that, and I was, and am, inspired. Seriously, what kind of world do I let my son grow up in, where people do not have the same rights when they are born in a certain place, in a certain gender, in a certain ethnic group or grow up to have a certain sexual orientation, religious belief system or whatever factor you can use to distinguish one person from another. Gender is just one of those factor, but maybe the biggest one. It’s the one factor that roughly splits humanity in two. Tackling this is the best first step we can take.

As a parent, I’m really astonished how early a child gets confronted with gender stereotyping. Apart from the blue and pink clothes, for me one of the most present ways are those little pictograms used in public places. Okay, I’m really fine with a different restroom for women and men. I appreciate how that’s both practical and comfortable. But what about the rooms where you can change your child’s diaper. Why on earth is that so often indicated by a pictogram indicating a mother and a child? It’s not only gender stereotyping, it’s teaching children from the very beginning that caring for a child is a mother’s role. How can we expect them to appreciate the need for equal rights, if their dads are apparently not even supposed to change their diapers?

Another example I recently came across, were a few priority seats in an airport terminal. They were located closest to the gate, reserved for mothers and their children. Again, this shows that only mothers are supposed to have the need to sit down with their children in a crowded airport to calm them down, feed them or just let them rest a bit. Fathers are not even supposed to be near them.

There are more examples like these. Much more. Maybe it’s not the most striking set of examples of how we can achieve equal rights, but I believe it’s one that counts and can easily be addressed.

It’s like I wrote earlier: dads should not do the dishes more often, dads should be more present in the lives of their children. And society, for example through the use of pictograms, should support them in that, embrace their presence, and not time and again ridicule it, or exclude dads from parenting.

Let me start by making one thing clear: I’m a big fan of equality and equal opportunities. People, no matter their gender, race, (sexual) preferences, religion or whatever trait makes them distinguishable from another person, have a right to live, love and be happy. Period.

Now, this would make a very short blog post, and not more than a statement of the to me obvious. And, I can already reveal, this will be not a short blog post. Today, I saw a talk at TEDxBerlin which triggered this post. The talk was about mothers and work-life balance – to reduce it to the most simple explanation. Now, this talk was based on extensive research, and the speaker did her work very well. Only, she based it on false propositions. Basically, and again reducing this respected work to its simplest incarnation, the message was that it is unfair that women have to give up their career when a couple becomes parents, and that this should change.Continue reading →